Mixing of components is known. The basic criterion for defining efficiency of a mixing process relates to those parameters that define the uniformity of a resultant mix, the needed energy to create this change in parameters, and the capacity of the mix to maintain those different new conditions. In some technologies, such as the combustion of a biofuel, an organic fuel, or any other exothermic combustible element, there is a desire for an improved method of mixing a combustible element with its oxidant or with other useful fluids as part of the combustion process.
Several technologies are known to help with the combustion of fuel, such as nozzles that spray a fuel within the oxidant using pressurized air, eductors, atomizers, or venturi devices that are sometimes more effective than mechanical mixing devices, these devices generally act upon only one components to be mixed (i.e. the fuel or the oxidant) to recreate a dynamic condition and an increase of kinetic energy. Engines such as internal combustion engines burn fuel to power a mechanical device. In all cases, these engines exhibit less than one hundred percent efficiency in burning the fuel. The inefficiencies result in a portion of the fuel remaining non-combusted after a fuel cycle, the creation of soot, or the burning at less than optimal rates. The inefficiency of engines or combustion chamber conditions can result in increased toxic emissions into the atmosphere and can require a larger amount of fuel to generate a selected level of energy. Various processes have been used to attempt to increase the efficiency of combustion.
In chemistry, a mixture results from the mix of two or more different substances without chemical bonding or chemical alteration. The molecules of two or more different substances, in fluid or gaseous form, are mixed to form a solution. Mixtures are the product of blending, mixing, of substances like elements and compounds, without chemical bonding or other chemical change, so that each substance retains its own chemical properties and makeup. Composites can be the mixture of two or more fluids, liquids, or gas or any combination thereof. For example a fluid composite may be created from a mixture of a fossil fuel and its oxidant such as air. While one type of composite is described, one of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that any type of composite is contemplated.
Another property of composites is the change in overall properties while each of the constituting substances retains their own properties when measures locally. For example, the boiling temperature of a composite may be the average boiling temperature of the different substances forming the composite. Some composite mixtures are homogenous, while other are heterogeneous. A homogenous composite is a mixture whose composition locally cannot be identified, while a heterogenous mixture is a mixture with a composition that can easily be identified since there are two or more phases present.
What is needed is a new fluid composite having desirable overall properties and characteristics, and more specifically a new fuel composite with improved property of enhance fuel burning, burn rates, greater heat production from the fuel, better spread of the thermal distribution in an environment, and other such properties. Further, fuel is often sent to a combustion chamber using a pump, since fuel is a liquid it is mostly incompressible. Compressibility allows for compression and expansion and is often desirable. Further, incompressible fluids are subject to great changes in internal pressure when flow is disrupted or pumping is not uniform. What is needed is a fluid composite capable of giving compressibility to a fuel without the disadvantages associated with compressible gases.
What is described in the references referenced herein is the capacity to mix all fluids, including liquids within liquids of different size. For example, at extreme mixing regimes, colloids can be created. These substances are small drops of one fluid microscopically dispersed evenly throughout another substance in which it is mixed in a stable form or an unstable form. Colloids can for example include particles in the dispersed-phase with a diameter of between approximately 5 and 200 nanometers (10−9 m). When a liquid is dispersed in a gas, the mixture is generally called an aerosol. Fog and mist are forms of water in air. When a liquid is dispersed in another liquid, the mixture is called an emulsion. Milk and mayonnaise are forms of emulsions. Milk is generally a stable colloid while mayonnaise can often be unstable and the phases will slowly migrate out of each other. Finally, when a liquid is dispersed in a solid, the colloid is called a gel. What is needed is a new dynamic emulsion resulting from high energy mixing.
As part of an emulsion, the system can be described based on the theories of excluded volume repulsion, electrostatic interaction, van der Waals forces, entropic forces, or steric forces. When small enough droplets of a liquid are mixed into a second liquid, the small particle size leads to enormous surface areas between both fluids. A mass of the dispersed phase can be so low that its buoyancy or kinetic energy to overcome the electrostatic repulsion between charged layers of the dispersing phase can prevent the merger back of the small spheres of dispersed liquid back into larger structures.
In contrast, microemulsions are clear, stable, isotropic liquid mixtures such as for example oil, water and surfactant, frequently in combination with a cosurfactant. The aqueous phase may contain salt(s) and/or other ingredients, and the “oil” may actually be a complex mixture of different hydrocarbons and oleofins. Microemulsions form upon simple mixing of the components and do not require the high shear conditions generally used in the formation of ordinary emulsions. The two basic types of microemulsions are direct (oil dispersed in water, o/w) and reversed (water dispersed in oil, w/o). While microemulsions made of oil/fuel and water are described, what is contemplated is the use of any two liquid, including for example a mixture of two different types of water, the same water, fuels, oils, and the like.
In ternary systems such as microemulsions, where two immiscible phases (water and ‘oil’) are present with a surfactant, the surfactant molecules may form a monolayer at the interface between the oil and water, with the hydrophobic tails of the surfactant molecules dissolved in the oil phase and the hydrophilic head groups in the aqueous phase. As in the binary systems (water/surfactant or oil/surfactant), self-assembled structures of different types can be formed, ranging, for example, from (inverted) spherical and cylindrical micelles to lamellar phases and bicontinuous microemulsions, which may coexist with predominantly oil or aqueous phases.
Various theories concerning microemulsion formation, stability and phase behavior have been proposed over the years. For example, one explanation for their thermodynamic stability is that the oil/water dispersion is stabilized by the surfactant present and their formation involves the elastic properties of the surfactant film at the oil/water interface, which involves as parameters, the curvature and the rigidity of the film. These parameters may have an assumed or measured pressure and/or temperature dependence (and/or the salinity of the aqueous phase), which may be used to infer the region of stability of the microemulsion, or to delineate the region where three coexisting phases occur, for example. Calculations of the interfacial tension of the microemulsion with a coexisting oil or aqueous phase are also often of special focus and may sometimes be used to guide their formulation.
The microemulsion region is usually characterized by constructing ternary-phase diagrams. As is currently understood, three components are the basic requirement to form a microemulsion: an oil phase, an aqueous phase and a surfactant. If a cosurfactant is used, it may sometimes be represented at a fixed ratio to surfactant as a single component, and treated as a single “pseudo-component”. The relative amounts of these three components can be represented in a ternary phase diagram. Gibbs phase diagrams can be used to show the influence of changes in the volume fractions of the different phases on the phase behavior of the system. What is needed is a new type of stable microemulsion formed from simply two phases.
Since these systems can be in equilibrium with other phases, many systems, especially those with high volume fractions of both the two imiscible phases, can be easily destabilised by anything that changes this equilibrium e.g. high or low temperature or addition of surface tension modifying agents. However, examples of relatively stable microemulsions can be found. Such microemulsions are probably very stable across a reasonably wide range of elevated temperatures.
The science behind microemulsions or emulsions resulting from high energy mixing is complex. For example the ouzo effect (also louche effect and spontaneous emulsification) is a phenomenon observed when water is added to ouzo and other a liqueurs and spirits, such as pastis and absinthe, forming a milky (louche) oil-in-water microemulsion. Because such microemulsions occur with only minimal mixing and are highly stable, the ouzo effect may have commercial applications. The addition of a small amount of surfactant or the application of high shear rates (strong stirring) via dynamic mixing can stabilize the microemulsion. In the ouzo mixture, the size of the droplets has been found to be the order of the micrometer (mm) Microemulsion preparation may have an average size of 0.4-100 nm are dispersed in an oil-phase dispersion medium. In some cases, for example in emulsions grown by Ostwald ripening, droplets of oil in the emulsion do not coalesce. The Ostwald ripening rate is observed to diminish with increasing ethanol concentrations until the droplets stabilize in size with an average diameter of 3 micrometer.
Microemulsions and emulsions have many commercial uses. A large range of prepared food products, detergents, and body-care products take the form of emulsions that are required to be stable over a long period of time. The Ouzo effect is seen as a potential mechanism for generating surfactant-free microemulsions without the need for high-shear stabilisation techniques that are costly in large-scale production processes. What is needed is a new type of microemulsion without surfactant.
A miniemulsion is also a special case of emulsion. A miniemulsion is generally obtained by shearing a mixture comprising two immiscible liquid phases, one surfactant and one co-surfactant (typical examples are hexadecane or cetyl alcohol). The shearing proceeds usually via ultra-sonification of the mixture or with a high-pressure homogenizer, which are high-shearing processes. In an ideal mini-emulsion system, coalescence and Ostwald ripening are suppressed thanks to the presence of the surfactant and co-surfactant, respectively. Stable droplets are then obtained, which have typically a size between 50 and 500 nm.
A nanoemulsions can be defined as an emulsion with mean droplet diameters ranging from 50 to 1000 nm. Usually, the average droplet size is between 100 and 500 nm. The terms sub-micron emulsion (SME) and mini-emulsion are used as synonyms. Emulsions which match this definition have been used in parenteral nutrition for a long time. The preparation of nanoemulsions generally requires high-pressure homogenization. The particles which are formed exhibit a liquid, lipophilic core separated from the surrounding aqueous phase by a monomolecular layer of phospholipids. Nano-emulsions are a class of emulsions with fine droplet size. Nano-emulsions with smaller droplet size can present an aspect similar to microemulsions, but, as fundamental difference, nano-emulsions are not thermodynamically stable, and, because that, their characteristics will depend on preparation method. In the so called low energy methods, fine dispersion is obtained by chemical energy resulting of phase transitions taking place through emulsification path. The adequate phase transitions are produced by varying the composition at constant temperature or by varying the temperature at constant composition, phase inversion temperature method (PIT).
What is needed is a new fluid composite having desirable overall properties and characteristics, and more specifically a new dynamic emulsion with improved properties, for example to enhance fuel burning, burn rates, greater heat production from the fuel.